by Cheryl Klam
I hate to admit it, but the few minutes it has taken to get my dad’s attention have helped to calm me down somewhat. But when I realize that I’m going to tell Dad about my feelings for Drew, I can feel my heart cave in on itself. “I just…I just…”
“Megan?” he says.
“I don’t feel good,” I say, turning back toward the street as I wipe my runny nose with the back of my hand.
“You don’t?” he says, surprisingly sympathetic. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just…my…my heart.”
“Your head?” my dad says. “Does it ache or something?”
Close enough. “Uh-huh.”
“I want you to go home right now and take it easy, you hear me? You want me to call the school? Because I’ll call them right now and tell them.”
Just hearing the protective tone in my dad’s voice makes me feel better. At least there’s someone who still cares about me.
Even though I have my dad’s permission to get out of school for the rest of the day, I somehow manage to tough it out through the final bell. When I get home I throw my hair in a ponytail, put on my sweatpants, and zip up the hoodie I’ve been wearing all day. I’m pouring myself my third bowl of Cap’n Crunch when I hear a knock on the door. I open it while chewing on a mouthful of cereal.
Oh my God. It’s Drew.
“Hey,” he says, holding Lucy’s white fuzzy sweater up in the air. “Your sister forgot this.”
I’m so incredibly relieved and happy to see him that I’m tempted to fling my arms around his neck and smother him with kisses. After I swallow my Crunchberries, of course.
“Is she here?” he asks, glancing over my shoulder.
Huh? What is he talking about? “I thought she was with you.”
Drew scratches the back of his arm nervously. “I dropped her off an hour or so ago.”
Okay, this is really odd. “She must’ve gone back to school or to Marybeth’s or something.”
Suddenly, we’re gazing at each other and my legs almost give out. Damn those mesmerizing eyes of his.
“Um, I’ll give her the sweater when she gets back,” I say, taking it from him.
“Great, thanks.” Drew starts walking back down the steps. As I watch him go, I think of all the things I could say to keep him here, like, “Could you open up this jar for me?” Or, “I think there’s a burglar in the house!” But instead I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my hoodie and step backward so I can shut the door.
“Megan!”
I whip the door back open.
“I’ve got an hour to kill before I have to pick my stepdad,” Drew says. “Do you mind if I hang out here for a while? Maybe we can run lines or something.”
Drew wants to hang out? With me? “Okay,” I say, as my heart turns into rubble.
He walks inside and I lead him into the living room and then stop so suddenly he almost crashes into me. My emphysema has returned and now I’m practically gasping for air. Drew is here, in my house, alone with me. What will we do? What will we talk about? And why am I wearing my old fat girl sweatpants with a hoodie that has a ketchup stain above my right boob?
“What’s this?” Drew points at the diorama in the middle of the coffee table.
“It’s a diorama I’m working on.”
“Cool. Of what?”
I adore how Drew seems interested and curious—about everything. “It’s Captain Ahab’s cabin, from Moby-Dick. I was hoping Mrs. Bordeaux might give me some extra credit.” I do a mental head slap. Why did I admit that I needed extra credit? It sounded so…loserish. “Pretty pathetic, I know.”
“That’s not pathetic!” he says. “I wish I had your talent. I could barely get through Moby-Dick.”
“Same here.”
“So…how do you do this? Get a shoe box from…” Drew picks it up and checks the bottom of the box. “Manolo Blahnik.”
“I stole it from my sister.” I look for a reaction from him at the mention of Lucy. As happy as I am that he’s here, it still feels weird, considering he was just on a date with her.
“Step one, steal a shoe box,” Drew says, running his fingers on the inside. “Hey, what’s this lined with?”
Hmmm. Not much of a reaction there.
“Oh, the wood? It’s really thin Baltic Birch. You can get it in sheets that are an eighth of an inch,” I announce, as if that news will really make his day.
“Eighth of an inch? So that makes it easier to cut.”
How cute. He’s trying to speak geek with me. “Yes, it does.”
“Is this Ahab’s ivory stool?” he asks, picking up a tiny stool from my dollhouse stash.
“You have a great memory,” I blurt out.
Ugh. I sound like one of my teachers.
“And what’s this going to be?” he asks, picking up a piece of wood that has a square peg attached to the bottom.
“That’s going to be his bed, but I haven’t finished yet.”
“What kind of tools do we need to finish it?” he asks, motioning toward all the equipment that I have scattered about the coffee table. I was not allowed to do this kind of thing in the living room since it was too easy to nick up furniture with all my saws and knives. But I don’t care. In an act of defiance against my mom and the lack of her parental support, I purposely defied the rules. Not that I’m worried, since Mom will never know. I’m too careful and skilled to nick furniture anymore.
“This looks like this could do some serious damage in the wrong hands.” Drew gingerly picks up my miter saw, which looks like a long, thin razor blade with a handle.
“That’s good for cutting little pieces of wood. And this,” I add, picking up the saw next to it, “is a jeweler’s saw. See this?” I point to the V-Block bench extension that I’ve hooked onto the coffee table. “I can put the wood on top and hold it in place so that I can cut shapes and designs into it.” I pick up the headboard for Ahab’s bed that I had cut in the shape of a whale and show it to him.
“Wow.” Drew’s hands touch mine as he traces his fingers around the tiny headboard in my hand.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I feel totally lightheaded and giddy, like the sugar rush I got from eating five glazed Krispy Kremes in a row (with custard filling).
“Can you teach me how to do this?” he asks, taking the circular saw.
“Make a diorama?”
“Sure,” he replies.
I feel like doing my George Longwell imitation and bursting into song, but mine would come with high leg kicks.
I put a piece of wood on the V block and wrap Drew’s fingers around the saw, showing him how to hold it. Even though he assures me he understands what he’s supposed to do, I can’t help but wince, since I’m pretty sure he’s going to cut off a finger or something. Amazingly enough, he doesn’t. It takes him a while, but he’s determined. And finally, he’s sawing through two pieces of wood. After he finishes, Drew holds them up for my approval.
“Well done, Drew,” I say.
Maybe I should just ask him to call me Miss Fletcher.
Drew puts down the wood and smiles at me while I imagine us in the production room, kissing. “Thanks, Megan. You’re pretty cool. There aren’t many beautiful girls who can handle a…what’s this called again?”
Beautiful? Drew just called me beautiful! I need to say something, but what? Should I thank him? Or does that seem too presumptuous? “Miter saw” is the only thing I can get out.
Obviously, Drew doesn’t interpret this as seductive come-on. Instead of grabbing me and throwing me on a bed of roses, he grabs Captain Ahab’s bed and places it in the diorama cabin. It immediately falls over. “Hmm,” he says. “I think we have a leg problem.”
I feel like whacking myself on the head for blowing a potential romantic moment. What is wrong with me? “It needs to be cut down a little.”
Drew sticks the bed on the butcher’s block. “Can I do it?”
“Yeah, just let me help you for a sec.” I l
ean back into him, purposely resting my arm against his as I show him how to work the saw.
“I think I’ve got it,” he says finally, taking the saw from me.
Another missed opportunity. Sheesh. “Be careful. That leg is kind of thick. It’ll be a little harder to cut than the boards.”
Drew slowly begins sawing off a little piece of the leg with the miter saw.
“Ouch!” he yelps as the saw knicks his finger.
Oh crap. I’ve killed him.
“Are you okay?” I shriek as I see red trickling down the palm of his hand.
“It’s nothing,” he says, wincing. “Just a little cut.”
I instinctively reach for his finger and put pressure on the wound, just like I’ve done for every single one of the freshman class. Even still, I’m borderline hysterical. “Maybe we should get you to a hospital!”
Drew laughs and leans his forehead against mine. This excites me in a way I never thought possible. “It’s no big deal, Megan. You’re pressing on my hand so hard you’ve definitely cut off my blood supply.”
I giggle, but the tone of it is anxious and worried.
Then Drew does something incredible. He kisses me softly on the forehead and says, “You’re so sweet.”
It’s funny. Even though I’ve shared my first kiss with Drew, and fantasized about having another one with him a million times afterward, this moment is far more intimate and thrilling than what we’ve already shared and what I’ve imagined might happen in the future. The reason why is because it’s unscripted. There are no stage directions telling us what to do. There is just him and me, standing close to each other, looking into each others eyes, waiting for someone else to make a bold move.
And then someone does.
Drew clears his throat and takes a step back, but I’m still clinging to his hand for dear life. “I guess I should probably get going.”
“We should really clean this cut, though,” I hear myself say.
Why do I even bother talking?
“I have a first-aid kit in the car,” Drew says quickly and looks at his watch. His voice sounds warbly, like he’s frightened of someone coming home and finding us there. “See you tomorrow,” he adds, before walking out the door.
When it closes behind him, I’m not so sure that I will.
Lucy arrives home nearly a half hour later and finds me in the backyard jumping rope. I have no idea why I’m doing this, considering that:
I haven’t jumped rope in about a million years.
Our yard is pretty much just a cement slab the size of a postage stamp.
I can probably count the number of times I’ve actually been in our “backyard.”
As anyone who’s ever jumped rope knows, after about two seconds you’re ready to keel over from exhaustion.
Nevertheless, here I am, jumping rope with all the energy and enthusiasm of a fourth-grader. But I don’t feel energized or enthused. The truth of the matter is that I have been suffering from severe anxiety ever since Drew left, and although I’ve felt anxious many times before, my usual solution (eating) just didn’t appeal to me at the moment. Besides, we were out of Oreos. I checked.
“What are you doing?” Lucy looks surprised and horrified, as if she just found me drinking directly out of the milk container.
I continue to jump even though I’m so winded I’m having trouble exhaling. “Interpretive dance.”
Lucy shakes her head, not finding my joke the least bit funny. She glances from the backyard of one neighbor to the other, apparently concerned that someone might witness my insanity. And then she goes back inside.
I stop jumping rope and go after her. “Drew brought back your sweater,” I say nonchalantly while following Lucy into the kitchen.
At the mention of Drew, my sister’s whole demeanor changes. Her sour expression morphs into one of sweetness and joy causing several of my internal organs to fail.
“Where is it?” she asks.
I point to the coffee table in the living room.
I’m kind of expecting Lucy to say something nasty about me having all my diorama crap on the table when I wasn’t supposed to, but instead she picks up her sweater and hugs it to her chest.
“I can’t believe he dropped it off. How incredibly sweet. It’s like he was looking for an excuse to see me again.”
I stop still as my worst fear comes to life.
“So you guys had fun?” I force myself to ask, trailing behind Lucy as she practically skips up the stairs like Tinker Bell tiptoeing through a field of fairy dust. I spent an hour with Drew, but I didn’t ask him a single thing about the play. The slight was intentional. I didn’t want to ruin our time together.
“Fabulous,” Lucy says with a big sigh. “It was so romantic.”
“Romantic? Are you talking about Drew or the play?” I think about how he kissed me on the forehead and wonder if I’d imagined it.
Lucy laughs as she opens our closet, expertly holding her dollhouse in place with her high-heeled boot. I haven’t seen her this happy since she was ten and the mall Santa told her she was the prettiest girl he had seen all day. “I was talking about the play,” she says. “But I have to say it was romantic being with Drew, too. He’s so different than I imagined. He’s sweet and funny…so easy to talk to. I had so much fun I didn’t want to leave. At least I have Friday to look forward to.”
“Friday?” I say quietly, my heart suddenly cramped in my throat.
“Drew and I are going to Marybeth’s party.”
WHAT? He asked my sister out again?
“You don’t look so good,” Lucy says, uncharacteristically (at least for the past month) demonstrating some concern for my well-being. “You better lie down.”
My brain simply does not possess the capability to digest the information my sister had so excitedly presented. Drew, the guy who hates parties unless he has someone special to talk to, asked my sister to go to a party with him on Friday night. That tender forehead kiss was nothing but my overactive imagination looking for proof that Drew might actually like me.
I’m such a fool.
I take Lucy’s advice and lie on the bed, throwing my arm over my eyes.
“What do you think of this top?”
I open one eye. Lucy is dancing around the room holding her bright purple cashmere sweater to her chest. “This and my new jeans.”
After I say what I used to tell Lucy all the time before the accident—“You’ll look beautiful”—I put a pillow over my face so she won’t see me cry through my nose.
twenty-one
climax (noun): the significant moment in the plot of a play, when things change or reach a crisis.
I haven’t been to school in two days. My official reason for staying home is that I’m sick with the flu, and since both of my parents are out of town on business trips and my sister is not about to shove a thermometer in my mouth, it’s an excuse I’ve gotten away with simply by not showering, neglecting to take my nasal spray (causing my nose to run like a faucet), and staying in bed. The real reason I’m staying home has nothing to do with my physical well-being and everything to do with my emotional state. Simply put: I can’t deal.
“Too bad you’re still sick,” Lucy says, walking into our room.
“Marybeth said you were invited, too.”
The aroma of Lucy’s sweet-smelling perfume fills the air as she sits on the edge of my bed and puts her hand on my forehead, her bracelets jingling as she moves. Lucy has spent the past forty-five minutes getting ready for school and looks as if she just stepped out of a fashion shoot. She is wearing a bright-red low-cut, skintight top; black jeans; and the same high-heeled boots she wore on her date to the play. “You don’t have a temperature.”
“I still feel sick, though.” I pull out two tissues and wipe the snot off my face for emphasis. There is no way I’m going to Marybeth’s. The whole reason I’m staying home from school is so I don’t have to see Drew.
“Do you need anything?” she a
sks.
On my first day of claiming to be sick, my sister practically ignored me. On the second day, she began to pay me a little bit of attention, grudgingly bringing me soup and ginger ale in bed. Even though I feel a little guilty about having her wait on me when I’m not really sick, a part of me is enjoying it. It is a restoration of the natural order of the world, the way things are supposed to be. I’m Lucy’s little sister. It’s her job to look out for my best interests and take care of me.
“More ginger ale,” I say, as I crumple the tissues into a ball and shoot it toward the trash. I miss the basket by a solid foot but my sister pretends not to notice.
“You finished it off last night,” Lucy says, standing. “I’ll pick some up on my way home from school. I don’t have practice today because Russell is going to New York this weekend and he’s leaving early.” She stops in the doorway. “If you want me to stay home with you tonight, I will.”
Lucy is willing to miss her date with Drew for me? After weeks of acting like she couldn’t stand to be around me, the generosity of her offer is surprising and astounding, not to mention tempting. “No,” I say finally. “You should go.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
I rub my forehead in an attempt to stop the sudden pounding inside my head. I’m doing the right thing, right? I can’t ask her to stay home just because I don’t want her getting her grubby paws on the guy I thought for a split second might be…mine. Or can I?
“Yes, of course,” I manage. Once again I have an urge to tell Lucy the truth, that I’m so in love with Drew that the thought of her alone with him makes me feel physically sick, but instead I say, “What time is he picking you up?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think we’re meeting there.”
I’m relieved. I had actually planned on locking the bedroom door, putting on my iPod, and hiding under the covers if Drew came by to get Lucy.